Chinatown’s future as a lively, growing urban center received a boost Thursday when the Planning Commission unanimously approved the environmental impact report for a $160 million rebuild of Chinese Hospital.
Despite complaints from preservationists over the planned demolition of the historic 1924 hospital at 835 Jackson Street, which is now being used as an administrative building, the commission decided the need for a modern, seismically safe medical facility in the city’s most densely populated neighborhood outweighed other concerns.

“It takes more than the preservation of selected historic buildings to preserve a community,” Gordon Chin, former head of the Chinese Community Development Center, told the commission. “It takes people.”

Without a space to care for the health-care needs of the community, it would be hard to keep Chinatown as “a vibrant residential community,” very different from other Chinatowns in America, added Sue Lee, executive director of the Chinese Historical Society of America and a former planning commissioner.

The construction plan calls for tearing down the old hospital and adjoining parking garage and building a state-of-the-art seven-story, 54-bed hospital and 22-bed skilled nursing facility on the site. The current hospital building, opened in 1979, will stay in operation until the new facility opens, perhaps as early as 2016, then be converted into administrative offices and lab space.

Chinese Hospital is the city’s last independent hospital. While about half its patients are from Chinatown and the surrounding neighborhoods, others come from elsewhere in San Francisco and other Bay Area communities. Nearly all the patients are of Asian ancestry and about 90 percent are age 60 or older. More than 90 percent of the doctors and staff at the hospital are bilingual in Cantonese and a significant number speak Mandarin, Linda Schumacher, the hospital’s chief operating officer, told the commission.

While the EIR and other required documents were approved unanimously, the commissioners made it clear they wanted to see changes in the exterior design of the new building to make it better fit the look of Chinatown.

The design “is universally bland, as if it can be put anywhere,” said Commissioner Ron Miguel. “And Chinatown is not just anywhere.”